China Power | Society | East Asia

China’s Definition of an ‘Evil Cult’ Is Expanding Beyond Religious Groups

“Create Abundance” is not, in any conventional sense, a religion. For that reason, its persecution signals a dangerous expansion of China’s ideological control.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recently added the Chinese group “Create Abundance” to its Victims List, identifying it as a persecuted religious organization. The designation is significant and welcome. It reflects growing awareness in Washington that Beijing continues to repress belief communities. 

Yet the label actually risks missing a deeper and more troubling reality: “Create Abundance” is not, in any conventional sense, a religion. For that reason, its persecution signals a dangerous expansion of China’s ideological control.

“Create Abundance” (创造丰盛) emerged nearly three decades ago as a loose network centered on personal development, moral reflection and mutual support. Its founder, Zhang Xinyue, promoted a set of ideas that emphasized self-improvement, gratitude, emotional awareness, and the pursuit of happiness through inner growth. Its teachings encouraged participants to draw from diverse traditions – religious or otherwise – on the premise that belief systems can help individuals live better, more ethical lives. But the group itself did not prescribe doctrine, clergy, rituals or exclusive truth claims. In fact, its membership has included Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, and others, coexisting within a shared framework of personal cultivation. 

In practice, “Create Abundance” functioned less like a church than like a hybrid of a book club, wellness network, and civic association. Its affiliated “Luxury Living Art Galleries” offered reading sessions, lectures, tea gatherings, travel programs, and discussions on philosophy and life improvement. The group’s guiding materials – such as “The Wisdom of Growth” and “The Growth of Heart and Spirit” – are, by any ordinary standard, closer to motivational literature than theological texts.

Yet it is precisely these features that made the group intolerable to the Chinese Communist Party.

While “Create Abundance” has been accused of defrauding members and operating like a pyramid scheme, that’s not what the Chinese authorities are concerned about. The legal cases against the group make that clear.

In 2025, a court in Liaoning Province convicted eight individuals associated with the network of “using superstition to undermine the implementation of the law,” sentencing them to prison terms and imposing heavy fines. Authorities shut down more than 1,000 affiliated venues across over 500 cities, confiscated massive assets and placed dozens of individuals on wanted lists. 

The evidence presented in court reveals the true nature of the prosecution – and its profound arbitrariness. The central “proof” against the defendants was an expert report commissioned from a state-affiliated think tank, which concluded that the group’s books promoted “idealism,” “superstition,” and “distorted worldviews” inconsistent with Marxist materialism. In other words, the crime was not fraud, violence, or coercion. It was the expression of ideas.

Even more striking, the judgment offers no concrete details – no victims, no specific criminal acts, no demonstrable harm. It provides vague assertions that the defendants “promoted positive energy,” traveled abroad, or obtained funds improperly. The confiscation of property – reportedly amounting to hundreds of millions of yuan and affecting even non-defendants – appears wildly disproportionate and detached from any proven wrongdoing. 

The campaign against “Create........

© The Diplomat